Progress vs. Grades
Many schools across the UK are placing now more emphasis on individual student subject understanding as opposed to focusing purely on the achievement of certain grades. [divider line_type=”No Line” custom_height=”20″]
SIMS has been accommodating this new trend with an assessment traffic light display.
With these changes to the Progress Grids, teachers using SIMS can now record in a simple traffic light display, whether a pupil is:
- emerging (just starting to learn a new skill) – RED
- developing (showing an increased understanding in that area) – AMBER
- secure (when they have achieved expectations) – GREEN
- mastered (teachers can also indicate this upon gathering further evidence of deeper understanding being shown.) – BLUE
A limitation of using a straight-forward RAG or traffic-light colour coded system is, what do you do when a student has reached his or her target grade, which is an A*?
In this situation, what usually happens is the attainment would be shown as ‘yellow’ – merely represented as “on-target” for achieving an A*.
Many teachers felt this feedback was unfair as these events would play down the achievements of G&T students, despite emphasising the attainments of middle ability learners. A big no no for differentiation gurus and those calling for more recognition and support for G&T students.
At Milk, we have decided to follow suit with a few slight differences:
- No data available (recently changed school perhaps?) – GREY
- emerging (just starting to learn a new skill) – RED
- developing (showing an increased understanding in that area) – AMBER
- secure (when they have achieved expectations) – GREEN
- mastered (for the highest level of attainment possible, e.g., A*) – BLUE
Quite often, when a new student joins a school, the data manager is not always able to acquire that student’s past assessment data. In these circumstances, Milk will display a ‘grey’ grid in the student achievement dashboard.
Another great example of how Milk supports schools with “life after levels”.
